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Chicken and Beer and Korean Drama

Who doesn’t love chicken and beer? Who waits two hours in line for it because of a TV drama? Well, “My Love From the Star” fans in China do, apparently.

“Man from Star” translated by my senior one student, Maggie. “My Love From the Star,” translated from Chinese. “You Who Came From the Stars,” literal Korean translation. Whichever is correct, I am trying out a Korean drama because I’ve been looking for a new tv series to binge watch and because Korean drama shows are what people are into here, I want to see what all the fuss is about. Sim and I were playing a game with our students today and I was talking to a girl, Jessica, about Korean tv shows. She asked me if I watched them, and I told her I don’t because I don’t know of any, so she recommended this one. Anyway, it’s about a guy from another planet that lands in Korea 400 years ago. He falls in love but he’s immortal, so he obviously outlives everyone, is still alive today and meets his past love’s doppelganger, falls in love with her…yada yada.

In comparison, The Big Bang Theory has been viewed 1.4 billion times on Sohu.com (another streaming site) (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-china-blackout-20140429-story.html So that gives you perspective of just how this show has blown up in China. In fact, the BuzzFeed articles talk about the show “ruining lives in China” because people are taking it too seriously and stupidly following trends like binging on fried chicken and ending relationships.

I watched the first episode on Thursday after class. It mostly focused on Cheon Song-yi, a stuck-up Korean actress, and her crumbling social media image based on her ignorant SMS posts. The other main character, Do Min-joon, who Song-yi, keeps crossing paths with, keeps a pretty stoic face throughout the whole episode, not wanting to interfere with humans’ fate. It’s cheesy and predictable, but there is something about it that made me turn on the second episode. Unfortunately, my routine of binge watching while I clean my apartment/make a stir fry/paint my nails/read through blogs, etc. doesn’t work here because I have to pay attention to the subtitles.